Tag Archives: Ryan Gosling

It is dangerous work, making a sequel to a classic like Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s 1982 magnum opus. French Canadian director Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 is a very good film, but it inevitably falls short of the original.

I first discovered Villeneuve’s work with his 2016 science fiction film Arrival (discussed with John Morgan here). Arrival impressed me as a highly imaginative science fiction film with an original visual style, told with an appealingly deliberate art-film pacing, with a stunning plot twist and a powerful emotional payoff. Read more …

Drive, the 2011 award-winning art-house crime thriller, is a modern retelling of the story of the knight in shining armor who saves a damsel in distress from the clutches of evil. Being modern, however, this is not a fairy tale that ends with “. . . happily ever after,” for the modern world cannot offer happiness for the heroic.

The film opens with a handsome young Nordic man (Ryan Gosling) driving through the dark streets of Los Angeles, alone in his 1973 Chevy Malibu. Read more …